Autry Johnson

“I don't quite know what we're doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fibre of my being. A man must live by his lights and do what little he can and do it as best as he can. In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

“Perfect joy excludes even the very feeling of joy, for in the soul filled by the object no corner is left for saying 'I'. We cannot imagine such joys when they are absent, thus the incentive for seeking them is lacking.”
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“It had something to do with paying attention and the ability to choose what I paid attention to, and to be aware of that choice, the fact that it’s a choice… That there were depths to me that were not bullshit or childish but profound, and were not abstract but actually much realer than my clothes or self-image, and that blazed in an almost sacred way… and that these realest, most profound parts of me involved not drives or appetites but simple attention, awareness, if only I could stay awake…”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. These thoughts are outside language, they are unformulable, although they are perfectly rigorous and clear and although every one of the relations they involve is capable of precise expression in words. So the mind moves in a closed space of partial truth, which may be larger or smaller, without ever being able so much as to glance at what is outside.”
― Simone Weil